WfJ/lIlEIII,,1f1(JIJI1/I, 25¢No. 416 '.~.1<'523 21 November 1986

Reaganites Sguirm Over Iran

Bonzo'sGonzo Diplomacy

Sloane/Gamma-Liaison

Secretary of State Shultz.

House chief of staff Donald Regannow cynically refers to his mediamanagers as a "shovel brigade thatfollow a parade down Main Streetcleaning up." They managed to turnaround the flap over U.S. disinforma­tion on Libya, instantly repackaged

continued on page 10

Republican conservative standard­bearer Barry Goldwater. NATO alliesare upset about being lied to, "moder­ate" Arab kings and emirs are lividover the U.S. arming Khomeini'sfanatical Shi'ite mullahs, while Secre­taryof State Shultz publicly dissentsand. floats rumors of resigning (don'thold your breath).

Since the administration "spin con­trol" on the Iranian junket has spun

. pretty far out of control, Washing­ton does not now deny, "plausibly"or otherwise, that McFarlane under­took a secret mission to Iran. White

Irish passports, Iraeli go-betweens,cakes and Bibles, American hostages,the National Security Council, byzan­tine intrigue in Teheran and the WhiteHouse basement: it's Ronald Reagan'sgonzo diplomacy. This glimpse intowhat passes for U.S. imperialist policyis brought to you live and in color withformer national security adviser Rob­ert McFarlane and his bunch of wildand crazy guys. And it looks like it'sturning into a major blowout for theadministration: "probably one of themajor mistakes the United States hasever made in foreign policy," said

What Are ThelDoing with 200 A-Bombs?

Zionist Madmen Target Russia

Israel-U.S. alliance aimed at Soviet Union. American F-15, above, used byIsraelis in 1,SOO-mile bombing raid on Tunisia last year.

On November 9 the Israeli cabinetissued a terse statement, without furtherdetails, that one Mordechai Vanunuwas being held somewhere in Israel.Later, police and prison authoritieswere quoted as saying that "the suspect"was not in a regular jailor detentioncenter. The London Guardian (10November) reported:

"Mr Vanunu is expected to face a secrettrial in which neither the precise chargenor the final outcome will be madepublic on the grounds of nationalsecurity."

Mordechai Vanunuis a 31-year-oldtechnician employed for nearly ten yearsat Israel's Dimona nuclear facility. His"crime" against "national security"? Hewas the source for a blockbuster exposesplashed across the front page of theLondon Sunday Times (5 October)under the headline: "Revealed: thesecrets of Israel's nuclear arsenal." TheSunday Times article trumpeted that itwas "the first direct evidence that Israelhas the bomb." More to the point, it hasmany, many bombs.

Vanunu had been dismissed alongwith 180 others in a cutback a year agoand, subsequently left Israel, appearingin London in late September to sell hisstory (reportedly for $456,000). Shortlyafter he finished his business with theSunday Times on September 30, Vanu­nu dropped from sight. There werereports he had been kidnapped by theMossad (the Israeli CIA) in Britain, oralternatively lured onto a yacht in theMediterranean, and secretly broughtback to Israel. In any case, this DeepThroat seems to have been silenced.

It's hardly new news that Israel hasthe bomb. As far back as 1974,the CIAhad noted in a memorandum that"Israel already has produced nuclearweapons" (New York Times, 29 Octo­ber). Indeed, a public United Nations

report last year estimated Israel'snuclear bomb capability at "15 to 20warheads." The real bombshell in theSunday Times expose was the revelationthat the plutonium production at Di­mona has been 40 kilograms a year, afigure far above all previous estimates,This means that "at least 100 and asmany as 200 nuclear weapons of varyingdestructive power have been assembled"by Israel.

Two hundred nuclear weapons? Thiswould make tiny Israel the world'ssixth-largest nuclear power after theU.S., the Soviet Union, Britain, Franceand China. And it means they'veprobably got more nukes per capita,than anyone. The article also presents

~ evidence that the Israelis might havethermonuclear Hvbombs, far moredestructive than A-bombs. How didthey get them, and what do they intend

to do with this arsenal? A dozen or soA-bombs could nuke every Arab capitaland make Hitler's Holocaust look likechild's play. Anyhow, the Jerusalemregime has always managed to get awaywith dropping murderous oonventionalbombs on peoples it didn't like, fromIraq to Tunisia.

What's going on here?Vanunu's storyraises plenty of questions, and RupertMurdoch's scab paper is no paragon ofaccuracy (they bought the bogus Hitlerdiaries, for instance). But 200 nukeswould mean the warmongers in Tel Avivand Jerusalem have a much biggertarget in mind: Russia. Is this a jointoperation with Washington in prepara­tion for nuking the Soviets? (They'realready in league with the White Housein secretly supplying the Iranian ayatol- .lahs with American arms.) Or are theIsraelis preparing to go solo? The

Zionist madmen could very easily-aridperhaps deliberately-trip over the trip'wire for World War Ill.

Secrets of DimonaIn the late 1950s, Israel with the help

of the French government (her ally inthe Suez War against Egypt) beganconstruction of an alleged "textile"plant in the Negev desert near the townof Dimona. When an American U-2spyplane discovered in 1960 that theDimona 'plant was really a nuclearreactor, Israeli prime minister DavidBen-Gurion swore that it would be usedonly for "peaceful" purposes, and evenagreed to allow international inspectorsinto the plant to verify his claims. Overthe years stories circulated about theIsraeli nuclear "bomb in the basement."Supposedly it was "only a screwdriveraway" from being operational. Now itappears that they have been turningthose screws all along.

According to Vanunu, alongside the"peaceful" reactor at Dimona there is abuilding known as "Machon 2," whosetwo innocuous floors above groundserve to hide a six-level concreteunderground bunker. Here, spent fuelrods from the reactor are processed inorder to separate out the vital plutoni­um for making A-bombs. False walls

continued on page 8

Was EI AIBomb a .

Mossad Plot?SEE PAGE NINE

Get Your Class-Struggle Defense Notes!

SEIU LOCAL 535 ENDORSES Poe WORK ••••••••••••••••• • •• ••••••• 2CLASS-WAR PRISONERS--NEW STIPEND RECIPIENTS ••••••••••••••• 4LETTER FROM GERONIMO PRATT •••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••• 5RAMONA AFRICA FACES NEW HARASSMENT •••••••••••••••••••••••• 7INTERVIEW WITH FllEED CLASS-WAR PRISONER ••••••••••••••••••• 8LETTER FROM SALVADORAN PHONE WORKERS 10PDC FILES AMICUS CURIAE BRIEF AGAINST CREATIONISM •••••••• 13FINANCIAL REPORT ~""""""""""""'''''.'''''' 19LETTERS FROM SUSTAINERS 22BUILD THE PDCI 23

The past four months have brought a new round in the govern­ment assault on democratic rights. The domestic counterpart ofReagan's military provocations--from the invasion of Bolivia inthe name of the " wa r -on drugs" and the vote of $100 million forthe bloodthirsty Nicaraguan contras by a Democratic controlledCongress, to unbrldled disinformation to justify a repeat attackon Libya--has been, the promotion of mass ignorance and intoler­ance buttressed by increasing state repression in 'order- to regi­ment the population to be mobilized for war against the SovietUnion.

Geronimo Pratthas spent 16years in jail,a victim ofracist cop/FBIframe-upconspiracyagainst BlackPanthers.

1n Struggle,geronimo

fested in such profound collectives asthe P.D.C., and want to encourage moreand more exchange between "thestreets" and the prison for it is essentialto the survival of the entire communitythat these compassionate acts continueto be realized. For me personally, when ireceived my first embrace from theP.D.C., it reminded me of a certainnight while i was locked deep withinfolsom's hole (4-A) back in 73, i had notseen any outside nor any artificial lightfor a long time, then suddenly whiledoing Yoga, i began to see out of thecorner of my eye, a vivid reflection of thefull moon thru a cracked glass across thecatwalk from the cage i was in.... Thefeelings were too immense to try andstate here, but the warmth, when ireceived your helping hand was verymuch the same. The Ray of Light stillshines ... from the Torch of the P.D.C.,from every heart that repels injusticeand every hand that seeks to slay thevultures that prey on the blood ofthe people the Torch warms as itenlightens pass it on and on and on.i Salute you,

from class-war prisoners and reports onthose cases and causes of vital impor­tance. to the workers movement. Helppublicize these cases. Get your copynow! Circulate it in your union localsand community.-organizations. Help usreach thousands of new readers. Build amass organization of class-struggledefense. Send your contribution to thePDC and receive a subscription toClass-Struggle Defense Notes. For asingle copy of issue number 2, send$.75 to: Partisan Defense Committee,P.O. Box 99, Canal Street Station,New York, NY 10013.

How do you like my-new typewriter?It's really something especially for an "01timer." Still learning to ..operate itproperly so bear with me. Hope theseletters be getting to you. Anyway, what iwant to address is the importance of thePartisan Defense Comm. to prisonerswho cannot get key documents, papers,books and generally the basic informa­tion that one needs in order to grow anddevelop in every way possible underthese adverse conditions, There are somany "stranded" Brothas and Sistasthruout these dungeons who are addi­tionally deprived of certain needsbecause of political reasons ... and whenassistance is given from the P.D.C. andother such concerns, it definitely makesa clear and inspirational difference. ihave nothing but praise for such deeplyrooted humane gestures which is mani-

The Partisan Defense Committee is aclass-struggle, non-sectarian legal de­fense organization in accordance withthe political views of the SpartacistLeague. In the tradition of the Interna­tional Labor Defense (ILD) underJames P. Cannon, its founder and firstsecretary from 1925 to 1928, the PDChas revived the tradition of monthlystipends to class-war prisoners as amessage to those whose freedom is thecause of the workers movement thatthey are not forgotten.

Class-Struggle Defense Notes; thenewsletter of the PDC, contains letters

Geronimo Pratt:"From the Torch of the poe"

The Partisan Defense Committee hasjust published the second issue ofits newsletter, Class-Struggle DefenseNotes, a 24-page report on the work ofthe PDC during the past four months.From behind prison walls Black Pan­ther leader Geronimo Pratt wrote aboutthe importance of the PDC:

NOVllIlBER 1986••44

IN THIS ISSUE

As we enter the era of the Rehriquist Supreme Court, it Lanecessary that labor's power put an end to this assault on demo­cratic rights nov. Cracks in Reagan's wall may be showing ..

We were pleased that an extended column of "Class-StruggleDefel:lse Notes" appeared in a supplement to Workers Vanguard dis­tributed during the recent ILA strike on the. Atlantic Coast .. OVera quarter of a million supplements were distributed by SpartacistLeague (SL) --supporters throughout major ports, from the GulfCoast to the Tidewater region as well as major urban centers. Thesupplements were enthusiastically received by the striking dock­workers as well as machinists, transit workers and brutally op­pressed blacks in the major urban ghettos.

NUMBER 2

Trotsky On Secret DiplomacyOn 23 November 1917, two weeks after

the Bolsheviks took power, they began topublish in Izvestia and Pravda the secretdiplomatic correspondence between tsaristRussia and its imperialist allies, exposingtheir predatory war aims. As SovietRussia'sfirst commissarfor foreign affairs,Leon Trotsky wrote the preface for this

TROTSKY publication, stating: LENIN

I~ und~rtaking the publication of the secret diplomatic documents relating to theforeign diplomacy of the tsarist and the bourgeois-coalition governments, ... wefulfil an obligation which our party assumed when it was the party of opposition.

~ecret diplomacy is a necessary weapon in the hands of the propertied minoritywhich is compelled to deceive the majority in order to make the latter serve itsinterests. Imperialism, with its world-wide plans of annexation, its rapaciousalliances and machinations, has developed the system of secret diplom.acy to thehighest degree .... The Russian people as well as the other peoples of Europe andthose of the rest of the world should be given the documentary evidence of the planswhich the financiers and industrialists, together with their parliamentary anddiplomatic agents, were secretly scheming.... .

Abolition of secret diplomacy is the first essential of an honorable, popular, andreally democratic foreign policy. The Soviet Governmenfhas undertaken to carryout such a policy, and that is why, having offered to all belligerents an immediatearmistice, it at the same time publishes the treaties and agreements which are nolonger binding on the .Russian workmen, soldiers, and peasants....

The government of workers and peasants abolished secret diplomacy With itsintrigues, ciphers, and lies. We' have nothing to hide. Our program expresses theardent desires of millions of workers, soldiers, and peasants. We desire a speedypeace on the basis of honest relations with and the full co-operation of all nations.We desire a speedy abolition of the supremacy ofcapital. In revealing to the wholeworld the work of the governing classes as it is expressed in the secret documents ofdiplomacy, we offer to the workers the slogan which will always form the basis ofour foreign policy: "Proletarians of all countries, unite!"

-Leon Trotsky, "Publication Of The 'Secret Treaties',"Izvestia, 23 November 1917

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2 WORKERS VANGUARD

tion is nonsense. Every country, shouldit so desire, will achieve its ownrevolution...." It was Stalin's epitaphfor the Comintern he had destroyed.

To buttress one historical fabrication,West invents another, claiming it was"Trotsky's demand" that the SovietUnion "impose a workingclass revolu­tion on Poland after its own revolutionin 1917." This is completely bollixed. In1920, the Red Army under LeonTrotsky repelled a surprise attack byPilsudski's Polish army. When theyreached the border of Poland, the issuewas posed whether to keep on going.Lenin was strongly for continuing theoffensive, seeing the historic opportuni­ty of linking up with the German work­ers; Trotsky had reservations, fearingthe Polish workers and peasants wouldnot rise up to greet the Red Army as

continued on page 4

~uclear war danger? Not peaceful coex­rstenee, byt "world-wide proletarian re­volution." You can hardly get more r-r-r­revolutionary than that, can you?

This is the "solution" that all theTrotskyite splinters offer in one way or~ther. From handbills and papers thatlittered the streets on the route of theGreat Peace March on Oct. 25th weread: '

"Those who today want an end towar can only want revolution." This

from a group calling itself "TheSpark. "

The "Workers' Advocate" (Marxist-LeninistParty, USA) attacks the Soviet Union as "socialimperialists," shouts that superpower talks are asmOke~~n to hide increased armaments, and de­mands brmg down the imperialists once and forall." And so it goes from one Trotskyite outfit toanother.

All of these phony-left sects have their feetfirmly planted in the cement-block foundationstone of Trotskyism: the fantasy-theory of "penna­~n~ revoluti~n."By this they mean that once a so­cialist revolution starts anywhere it must be contin­ued.~ithout interruption until the whole world issocialist. B~ause the Soviet Union refused to im­pose a workingclass·revolution on Poland after itsown revolution in 1917, despite Trotsky's demandthe !rotskyites have denounced "the betrayal ofth~Soviet bureaucrats" ever since. To them the Sovi­~t opposirion on principle to the export 'of revolu­tIOn.~ Its adv~acy of peaceful coexistence fromLe~1D s day on, ISbetrayal and capitulation to capi­talism!

So it was not surprising that the Trotskyiteso~POsed a negotiated peace in the U.S. war on~Ie~: They wanted the war to go on until U.S.1",Ipenalism was overthrown no matter how manyVietnamese people and U.S. youth were killed.How much havoc they tried to create in the peacemovements of that time!

It is thiss~e bed-rock fantasy theory of per­mane~t .revolubon, against which Lenin stronglypolenuClzed and rejected - that impels the sundryT~ts.kYite ph~ny-Ieft groups to playa disruptive.splitting role ID the peace movements and in what­ever .movements they penetrate. Hatred of peacefulcoexistence and of the quest for a peaceful world inthe nuclear age is endemic to Trotskyism. Littlewonder that in the broad peace movements theyhave earned the designation of "Crazies. "

• I-7 November 1986

The Trotskyites again betraythe struggle for disarmament

T he Reykjavik summit has served to. b~g the overriding issue of our

times into sharp relief: the imperativeneed to free the world of the danger ofnuclear omnicide.

So long as this cataclysmic threat andthe tremendous costs entailed hang overthe~d. a brake is putupon progress insolVlDg the great contemporary socialproblemsand a black-out imposed on thehopesfor a better future JIM

That· ' WESTISwhy all eyes everywhere were

turned to the capital of Iceland when Ronald Rea­::e.and Mikhail Gorbachev met for the second

. When Ronald Reagan pulled back from thebrinkof agreement on the historic end-the-nuclear­arms-~proJl?Sals of Mikhail Gorbachev, he sig­naled his mtention to continue the slide to the brinkof nuclear war by pressing ahead with the disas­trousStar Wars program.

. . The. CasJ>ll:T Weinbergers, the ultra-right and~tary-indus?'Ial .c0",lplex heav~ a great sigh ofrelief. Reag~ s rejection of the historic opportuni­ty for real bilateral nuclear disannament cloudedout the spectre of peaceful co-existence. the baneand the mghtmare of the ultra-right and militarists.

There was more than a jest involved when asenator said, in effect, that the far right would havebanned Reagan from re-entering the U.S. on theMcCarran-Walter grounds that he had met withand had dealings with a Communist in Iceland.. Th~ ~xtre.me right attack on the issues-clarify­~g, posmve Side of the summit has its counterpart~ the attacks from the phony left. To be more pre­cise, from the Trotskyite splinter groups.

. According to the "Workers' Vanguard" Mik­hail ~hev. is a "betrayer," one who is'sellingout to ~mpe~~sm for meeting wilh the presidentof~ IIDpenallst U.S.A. in order to advance theSoviet ~uest for peace. The sheet of the TrotskyiteS~lSt League distorts what happened at thesumnut by portraying theSoviet Union as making~ne ,~cession after another to Reagan "initia­tives ! (The far right was pointing to the "danger"ofReagan yielding to Soviet pressure!)

One ~an hear a demagogic "Amenl" from theextreme nght and the militarists upon reading in"Workers' Voice" these words: ''The world .: inshort, would become a far more dangerous place ifthepro~ 'disannament' deal were signed."

What IS the answer of the Trotskyites to the

Jim West is a ~mber of the Political Bureau of theCOIIU1IIUIi.st Pony, USA. and chairll/Qll ofits Central Re.viewCOIIIIIIission.

Soviet Republic side by side with im­perialist states for any length of time isinconceivable. In the end one or theother must triumph."

It was J. V. Stalin who proclaimed themyth of "peaceful coexistence," acorollary of his anti-Marxist dogma ofbuilding "socialism in one country."This was the antithesis of Lenin'sprogram of world socialist revolution,on which the Communist Internationalwas founded. As for opposition "inprinciple" to the "export of revolution,"even Stalin didn't dare proclaim thatuntil a decade after he usurped power,politically expropriating the Sovietworking class. In 1936, after Stalinallowed Hitler to march unimpeded topower, and prepared to behead theSpanish Revolution, the Great Organiz­er of Defeats told an American bour­geois reporter, "The export of revolu-

ence only embolden the Reaganitereactionaries. West makes an amalgamof the "far right" and "phony left,"declaring "peaceful co-existence" to bethe "bane and the nightmare of theultra-right and militarists." He inveighsagainst "Trotskyite splinter groups,"chiefly the SL, "portraying the SovietUnion as making one concession afteranother to Reagan 'initiatives'." Fun­ny, but we don't recall any right-wingersraising this complaint.

Compared to the villainous "CasparWeinbergers, the ultraright andmilitary-industrial complex," RonaldReagan almost comes off as a good guyin the CP's view. The favorites of the"detente'l-blinded reformists are, ofcourse, "peace-minded" Democrats.Another article in the issue proclaims a"Peace movement agenda for newCongress" following the Republicandefeat in the November 4 elections.Actually, the Democrats' chief spokes­man on "defense" (i.e., war), Sam Nunn,attacked Reagan from the right overReykjavik for even suggesting giving upnuclear weapons.

To give the CP's liberal politics a"left" cover, West refers to a supposed"Soviet opposition on principle to theexport of revolution and its advocacy ofpeaceful coexistence from Lenin's dayon." This is an invention of the crudestsort. Repeatedly during World War I,Lenin denounced pacifist "disarma­ment" delusions:

"A bourgeoisie armed against theproletariat is one of the biggest, funda­mental and cardinal facts of moderncapitalist society. And in face of thisfact, revolutionary Social-Democratsare urged to 'demand' 'disarmament'!That is tantamount to complete aban­donment of the class-struggle point ofview, to renunciation of all thought ofrevolution. Our slogan must be: armingof the proletariat to defeat, expropriateand disarm the bourgeoisie.... Only

. after the proletariat has disarmed thebourgeoisie-will it be able ... to consignall armaments to the scrap-heap."

-V.1. Lenin, "The'Disarmament' Slogan"(October 1916)

On "peaceful coexistence" with imperi­alism, Lenin would certainly qualify as a"crazy" in the CP's book. In March 1919he proclaimed: "The existence of the

"Trotskyites" as splitters, disrupters and"crazies" driven by "hatred of peacefulcoexistence." -

The People's Daily World was attack­ing our article on the Iceland summit("Limits to Betrayal?", WVNo. 414, 24October) in which we warned thatKremlin concessions to U.S. belliger-

CPUSA press, 2 September .1983:cringing falsification in face of U.S.KAL 007 spy provocation.

SOVIETS DENYDOWNING PLANE

Radar supports denial

...

"When the leaders speak of peace,the common folk know that war iscoming. When the leaders cursewar, the mobilization order is al­ready written out."

-Bertolt Brecht

To commemorate the 69th anniver­sary of the Bolshevik Revolution, wepublished on the front page of the 7November issue of Workers Vanguard'an article headlined, "We Are the Partyof the Russian Revolution!" On thesame date, the People's Daily Worldprinted a not too competent polemic byCommunist Party Political Bureaumember Jim West against the SpartacistLeague titled, "The Trotskyites againbetray the struggle for disarmament."For the CP, disarmament's the goal,talk of revolution is a provocation, anddefense of the Soviet Union is not to bementioned.

West sneers at revolution with a dis­dain worthy of a bourgeois politician:"What is the answer of the Trotskyitesto the nuclear war danger? Not peacefulcoexistence, but 'world-wide proletari­an revolution.' You can hardly get morer-r-r-revolutionary than that, can you?"Permanent revolution is dismissed as a"fantasy theory." And of course thereare the usual Stalinist denunciations of

CP SabotagesDefense of

Soviet Union, Again

Hands Off Izvestia!

u.s. Breaks Into' Home,Robs Soviet Reporter

On November 13, two U.S. mar­shals, without warning, barged intothe Washington, D.C. private resi­dence of Izvestia correspondent Leo­nid Koryavin. These governmentthugs with badges grabbed the Sovietreporter's typewriter, the principaltool of his work. And they threatenedto return with a truck and haul awayhis desk, filing cabinets, bookcases andeven his television set!

This Gestapo-like raid on the homeof a foreign correspondent grew out ofa so-called "libel" settlement awardedCalifornia "businessman" RaphaelGregorian. Gregorian claimed he lost a$10 million operation in the SovietUnion after an 18 November 1984Izvestia article accused him "of 'con­traband operations' and of sellingoutdated medical equipment" (NewYork Times, 14November). The Soviet ­bureaucracy, enamored of mythical

"peaceful coexistence," is, if anything,oversolicitous of Western capitalistswho in return routinely use their menin Moscow to engage in espionage.

Gregorian launched a $320 milliondamage suit against Izvestia and theSoviet Ministry of Foreign Tradewhich revoked his trade license withthe Soviet Union, in a U.S. districtcourt in California. In June the federaljudge awarded him $413,000. Notcontent with using the courts to violate

the rights, invade the privacy and stealthe property of Soviet journalists,Gregorian's attorney has also subpoe­naed the Soviet press agency TASSand asked the judge to seize the U.S.bank accounts of the Soviet Bank forForeign Trade.

The Soviet embassy sent a diplomat­ic note to the State Departmentprotesting this grotesque violation ofhuman rights, press freedom and theinternational conventions protecting

foreign journalists. When on the basisof considerable evidence the Sovietsarrested and charged U.S. News &World Report "correspondent" Nich­olas Daniloff with espionage, theAmerican media raised a smokescreenof righteous indignation over freedomof the press. Where is the hue and cryover the U.S. government when ittramples upon elementary democraticrights in robbing an Izvestia reporterin his home?

This sinister and provocative attackon a Soviet journalist is of a piece withthe mass expulsions of Soviet diplo­mats, repeated incursions into Sovietwaters and airspace, and armingcutthroat mullahs and feudalists fight­ing the Red Army in Afghanistan: apattern of provocation aiming at war.The . wackos and witchhunters inWashington had better be stopped.Hands off Izvestia! .

21 NOVEMBER 1986 3

s.F. Black-Firefighter VictimizedFor Fighting Racist AttackSAN FRANCISCO-Hugh Smith is afirefighter, an ex-Marine who was com­mended for bravery last year by the cityfire department. But this is racist,capitalist America, and Smith is one of arelative handful of black firemen in thecity run by Democratic mayor "DixieDianne" Feinstein. When Smith con­fronted a white racist fireman whocalled him a "nigger" in his station houselast June, Smith's superior officerscovered up the incident and ordered himto lie about it. When Smith blew the lidoff, he was charged with making a "falsereport" and ended up with a "letter ofreprimand" in his file-to be removed insix months if he "keeps out of trouble"!This is an outrage! As Smith bitterlycommented, "A guy attacks me racially,and they put me on trial. I feel I was avictim" (Chronicle, 23 October).

During the Fire Commission's farci­cal hearing, the three officers involved inthe cover-up defended themselves byclaiming Smith agreed to go along withit. When the black fireman first de­manded action from his superiors, onesimply ignored him while another triedto pretend he was "kidding." Smithtestified that he was ordered to reportthat a hand injury received in his scufflewith the racist resulted from a fall in theshower. The racist creep, Jack Fitzpat­rick, said he used the word "nigger"frequently to include people other thanblacks and defined the word as "thelowest element of any race or people."

Again, CPSabotages•••(continued from page 3)

liberators. But Stalin did everything hecould to sabotage the offensive, divert­ing crucial forces from the drive on War­saw, which ultimately stopped the RedArmy on the Vistula (see "The Bolshe­viks and the 'Export of Revolution',"Spartacist No. 27-28, Summer 1980).

Continuing the method of the amal­gam, the CP tries to equate us withevery manner of minuscule anti-Sovietsect, such as the social-democratic"Spark" group and the "Marxist­Leninist Party" (MLP), erstwhile aco­lytes of Enver Hoxha's Albania. TheMLP would certainly object to beinglabeled "Trotskyite"-indeed the vari­ous ex-Maoist groups are merely Stalin­ists without a country. And in treacher­ously equating the USSR with the USA

50e (24 pages)

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4

Q)

"0'coL:ou,en

HughSmith

Even the commission was astounded byhis brazen claim he meant no racistinsult. This disgusting racial epithet is afighting word. It's Klan talk, thelanguage of the lynch rope. Smith'sresponse-that of any self-respectingblack person-was more than justified.

Two of the three officers involved inthe cover-up ended up with short sus­pensions, the third with a "letter of rep-

. rirnand" to be removed in six months,but unlike Smith's without the insulting"stay out of trouble" condition. Fitz­patrick was suspended for 30 days. Thistoken punishment Of the racists-randegregious slap at the victim gives thegreen light to racists throughout thecity. Smith's case has become a focalpoint for a racist mobilization in thedepartment. At the Fire Commission

as two imperialistic "superpowers," theyscab on the defense of the gains of theBolsheviks' October Revolution. West,of course, doesn't mention that ourarticle prominently declared: "Defendthe Soviet Union!"

In fact, West doesn't mention defenseof the Soviet Union-and for goodreason. West tries to claim the Sovietmantle by hailing the "historic" dis­armament proposals of CPS U generalsecretary Mikhail Gorbachev. But we'vepointed out before how the CPUSA's"detente" illusions have led it to aban­don defense of the Soviet Union onseveral occasions. For example, whenthe KAL 007 jetliner was shot downoverflying some of the most sensitiveSoviet military installations in the FarEast, the Daily World (2 September1'983) published a banner headline:"Soviets Deny Downing Plane." Theynot only invented a Moscow denial, butrefused to believe the Soviet Unionwould defend itself against the unidenti­fied intruder.

What about when the New YorkTimes (2 November 1984) asked GusHall where the CPUSA disagreed withthe Soviet Union-Hall replied thatPolish Solidarnosc was "a positivestep," and, "The other socialist coun­tries should learn a lesson from it...."This was the favorite "union" of Rea­gan, the pope and the Wall Street bank­ers! The Spartacist League said: "StopSolidarnose Counterrevolution!" Orwhen Hall told the CPSU congress thatGorbachev had a duty to come to asummit in the U.S. no matter whatprovocations the Reaganites threw up."Do you suggest," the astounded Sovietleader asked, "that I come to your coun­try without conditions?" Hall replied,"Without conditions" (New Times, 24March). This was Reagan's line! At leastthe Kremlin said no to that one.

Appeasement is not the way to dealwith these capitalist warmongers, whogo from one provocation to another,dispatching civilian planes to penetrate

hearings, white firemen sat on one side,blacks on the other. A statementcirculated by John Flaherty, presidentof the San Francisco Fire ChiefsAssociation, and signed by 34 of the 62chiefs, denounced the token punish­ments meted out to the four whites as"extraordinarily unfair and inconceiva­bly harsh," and Smith's punishment as"absurdly lenient"!

Far from being an isolated episode (asFeinstein tried to claim, blaming "a fewbad apples"), the incident exposed thepervasive racism in the city's firedepartment, 85 percent white in thismultiracial city with large minoritypopulations. Today there are only 79blacks in the force of some 1,500,whichhas long been a job-trusted, ethnicwhite, largely Irish preserve, with jobspassed on to relatives. A lawsuit iscurrently in the process of being settled,challenging the civil service tests used tohire and promote firemen as racially andsexually biased (93 percent of whitesand 55 percent of blacks passed the lastone). As Robert Demmons, president ofthe Black Firefighters Association, tolda Board of Supervisors committeehearing in October, racial harassmenton the job began when San Francisco'sfirst black firefighter was called a racistname his first day on the job in 1955andhas continued ever since.

Hugh Smith got a firsthand taste ofwhat can be expected from the bosses'state. In this city it's run by Feinstein,

o15s:a,

>3:

CPUSAchairman Gus

Hall peddlessocial-patriotic

line of"peaceful

coexistence."

Soviet air space over military zones,sending U.S. ships into Soviet territorialwaters near key naval bases, rammingSoviet submarines, expelling Sovietdiplomats en masse. This is not to saythat the Trotskyists reject all negotia­tions with the imperialists. West takes usto task for opposing a "negotiatedpeace" in Vietnam: "They wanted thewar to go on until U.S. imperialism wasoverthrown no matter how manyVietnamese people and U.S. youth werekilled." We denounced the CP and itsreformist and liberal cohorts for callingfor negotiations in Vietnam instead offighting for the victory of the Vietnam­ese Revolution. But we did not call the1973 Paris accords a betrayal: we said itwas a "temporary bargain" and pro­claimed: "The Civil War Goes On" ( WVNo. 16, February 1973). The war did goon, U.S. imperialism was overthrown,and we hailed that victory.

As we proclaimed in the article Westattacks, as Lenin repeatedly declared,..Workers Revolution Must Disarm theImperialists t"

One has to ask after all this, why is itthat the CPUSA should print such anignorant and vulgar "polemic." Certain­ly not in order to expose their "Com­munist" pretensions to ridicule. Is Gus

who flew the Confederate flag of slaveryand KKK terror in front of her city hallfor two years before the SpartacistLeague and Labor Black League forSocial Defense tore it down. Her copsposted a Nazi swastika poster in a policevan at an anti-apartheid demonstrationin 1985. Democratic Party administra­tions have been doing the dirty work forReagan in cities...around the country­like black Democrat Wilson Goode,mayor of Philadelphia, who ordered the1985 MOVE massacre in which elevenblack people, including five kids,' weremurdered. While the courts may ordersome cosmetic changes in the SF firedepartment's discriminatory hiringpractices, the state generally takes aninterest in "equal employment" in thelabor movement only as a cynical coverfor union-busting schemes.

The American proletariat has a vitalstake in fighting to integrate the work­force, including the firemen who (unlikethe racist union-busting cops) are partof the working class and perform vitalsocial services. We fight for revolution­ary integrationism, including jobs forall, union-run special recruitment andtraining programs for minorities andwomen, an end to racial and sexualdiscrimination in hiring and on the job.It will take an integrated, class-struggleleadership of Bay Area labor to cleanout the bigots from the station house tothe suburbs and crush the KKK race­terrorists. That was shown in practice in1980, when the 1,200-strong ANCANmobilization led by the SpartacistLeague stopped the Nazi scum from"celebrating" Hitler's birthday in theSan Francisco Civic Center. And thismeans a workers party to struggleagainst the capitalist parties, for aworkers government to put an endto the racist, capitalist system ofexploitation.•

Hall getting some heat over his grovel­ing pro-detente line from abroad, aswhen French CP leader Duclos sent amissive (on Stalin's behalf) to EarlBrowder suggesting that dissolving theCPUSA was carrying the People'sFront with Roosevelt too far? Or couldit be that some quite senior CPers aregetting a little tired of their crappyorganization, and like seeing a genuinecommunist paper, if only as an externalpoint of reference.•

Spartacist LeaguePublic Offices

-MARXIST LlTERATURE­Bay AreaFri.: 5:00-8:00 p.m., Sat.: 3:00-6:00 p.m.1634 Telegraph, 3rd Floor (near 17th Street)Oakland, California Phone: (415) 839-0851

ChicagoTues.: 5:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 11:00a.m.-2:00p.m.161 W. Harrison St., 10th FloorChica.go, Illinois Phone: (312) 663-0715

New York CityTues.: 6:00-9:00 p.m., Sat.: 1:00-5:00 p.m.41 Warren St. (one block belowChambers St. near Church St.)New York, N.Y. Phone: (212) 267-1025

WORKERS VANGUARD

Industrial·Murder·in the North Sea

do not, however, urge a course ofseparation: the Scottish and Welshproletariat have been in the vanguard ofthe working class movement in theBritish Isles. The answer is neither thefool's gold of Scottish nationalism,which would leave the Scottish workingclass no less brutally exploited, nor thevile "socialism" of Kinnock's LabourParty, which revels in its strikebreakingand treacherous fealty to the Englishruling class. Having stabbed the minersin the back, "Judas" Kinnock goes offon a pilgrimage to the Berlin Wall tolaud the Nazi effort to fight off the RedArmy liberation of Berlin and then laysa wreath for the racist cop killed duringthe police invasion of London's Totten-ham ghetto last year! .

A revolutionary struggle for socialismcan unite the English working class withthe downtrodden peoples of the Celticfringe and the oppressed black andAsian minorities-who all have goodreason to hate and fight the Britishruling class. Above all, that requires theforging of a Leninist-Trotskyist van­guard party through splitting the work­ing-class base of the Labour Party fromthe pro-capitalist tops. Such a party willact as tribune of the oppressed, mobilis­ing all the downtrodden' in this societybehind the social power ofthe proletari­at and finally sweeping the racistbutchers of this senile ruling class intothe dustbin of history .•

of the PATCO air traffic controllersunion led directly to a sharp rise in airfatalities. Had the ASTMS struck insupport of the heroic British coal minersstrike-when oil-fired power stationsplayed a crucial strikebreaking role­they could have made the difference indeep-sixing "Iron Lady" Thatcher,whose revenues depend heavily onNorth Sea oil. For union control oversafety and working conditions! For astrong industrial union of North Sea oilworkers under class-struggle leadership!

From Whitehall to the City of Lon­don, the ruling class has seen in theNorth Sea oilfield the saviour thatwould somehow save clapped-out Brit­ish capitalism indefinitely from eco­nomic disaster. But it has not. And nowthe one region of Scotland that due tooil has had some measure of alleviationfrom the all-around economic devasta­tion is finding that this was transient andillusory. As the oil industry goes intodecline, it is estimated that 40,000 jobswill be lost, ripping the heart out of thisenclave of Scottish "prosperity." It's noaccident that a significant number ofthose killed aboard the Chinook camefrom Fife, once a rich coalfield, sinceturned into industrial desert. Acting outa capitalist sequel to the HighlandClearances, Scotland (like Wales) hasbeen viciously ravaged and ripped off bythe British bourgeoisie in its epoch ofdecay. And look what British imperial­ism has done in Ireland.

Marxists stand for the right of self­determination for the Celtic fringe. We

would one expect the notoriously'rapacious oil companies to give to theirworkers?

The North Sea helicopter disaster wasfundamentally of a piece with the Kin­ross gold mine catastrophe in SouthAfrica a couple of months ago, in whichnearly 200 black miners were asphyxiat­ed a mile underground. For the capital­ist bloodsuckers, the bottom line-,literally-is their profit statement at theend of the fiscal year; and to that end,human life is expendable. In particu­lar, the' English-centred bourgeoisiehas routinely treated Scottish workingpeople as expendable, be it as cannonfodder in the Scottish regiments or asworkers on North Sea oil rigs.

The oil workers have considerableindustrial muscle. The nascent SouthAfrican black National Union of Mine­workers organised a powerful memorialstrike in outrage Over the Kinrossmassacre. But to the extent the NorthSea oil workers are unionised, they haveonly the pathetic ASTMS, which or­ganises primarily white-collar techni­cians. Shortly before the recent crash,government official Norman Margue­rite wrote to "interested parties" (nodoubt including the ASTMS leader­ship) expressing gratitude for their"patience" over long-postponed reformsin safety conditions. •

Union-busting paves the way toindustrial murder. Reagan's smashing

Striking Britishminers in

1984 funeralprocession for

coal miner killedby scab. Generalstrike then could

have broughtdown bloody

Thatcher.

which are central to the functioning ofthe oilfield are five times more likely tomalfunction and crash than fixed-wingaircraft. The pilot must maintain hands­on control of these "unstable platforms"during every instant of flight. And in theNorth Sea oilfield, they operate virtual­ly without cease, making the air trafficcontrol centre at Brent Log one of thebusiest in Europe (at one time secondonly to London's Heathrow interna­tional airport). The New Yorker cor­respondent notes that "The parallelbetween the North Sea and space hasbecome one of the cliches of theindustry." But if the imperialist bour­geoisie is prepared to see seven astro­nauts blown to bits aboard the Chal­lenger space shuttle, what concern

North Seaoil rig:

Capitalismcreates

disaster­ridden,frozen

hell forworkers.

Conditions on the North Sea oil rigs. epitomise the total disdain for the

lives and welfare of the workforce thatis characteristic of capitalist exploita­tion. In April 1977, "Red" Adair, theAmerican oil rig troubleshooter, said:"Whatever precautions are taken,there'll be a disaster in the North Sea,sooner or later. There are no properfacilities for coping with it" (NewYorker, 27 January). The North Seaoilfield has been plagued with disasterfrom its inception. In December 1985,13 men were killed when the Sea Gem,one of the first drilling barges, capsizedand sank. Several weeks after. Adair'sprediction, Well 14,on Ekofisk Bravo inthe Norwegian sector of the. oilfield,blew out. The oil companies had pre­viously rejected Adair's proposal for aspecialised firefighting vessel on thegrounds of expense.

North Sea oil adds something like £2million (almost $3 million) per hour tothe coffers of the oil magnates-everypenny of it leached out of the blood ofthe workforce. The workers, many ofthem highly skilled and specialised,work straight 12-hour shifts 14days at astretch. (You can get a taste of theDante-like infernal scene, minus thehigh-tech, from the Sean Connery filmOutland.) They are forced to work onslippery platforms blown backwardsand forwards by gale-force winds in aprisonlike regime-s-booze and womenare banned, newspapers are generallyseveral days old, their only source ofrelaxation videotapes. Except in thesleeping areas, the deafening din andvibration of the rigs is everywhere andalways present. And, unlike onshore oilrefineries, workers can't run away froma. fire; they can only jump into thesurrounding icy sea.

And the helicopters-s-mostly Chi­nooks and the smaller Sikorski S-61s-

='rl out of ....--i",.. y;

---, --.,.'-=::~~JuIr,~ ....... Court-.c1alDn

_........ SEE PAGE SIX _

::-:- .'d .uk. to Hne ,.. 2ree AbortIon On Demand! •.•

::C:-A:~:::~IaIef' ··············...3~"cwDetMee of Sdence,

....11Jtion of ChlRh 8nd S 4

$.50 single issue$2.00 4-issue subscription

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Make checks payable/mail to:Spartadst Publishing Co.Box 1377.GPONew York. NY 10116

LONDON-On November 6, one of theworst helicopter crashes in history tookplace just off the Shetland Isles in theNorth Sea. Forty-five men, oil workersworking on the offshore oil rigs, diedas their Chinook helicopter founderedand broke up in the icy waters of theNorth Sea.. where you're lucky to lasttwo minutes in the near-Arctic condi­tions before freezing to death. Miracu­lously, two survived, by clinging to apiece of wreckage and a dinghy andbeing fortuitously picked up by a coastguard chopper on a training flightwithin minutes of the crash. Otherwise,they too would have frozen anddrowned.

The ill-fated Chinook helicopter wasowned by Robert ("Captain Bob")Maxwell, darling of treacherous Labourleader Neil Kinnock and owner of anumber of daily papers. His recentlyacquired British International Helicop­ters has taken over much of the workinvolved in ferrying oil workers to andfrom the various rigs and depots dottedaround the North Sea. Having sent'these 45 mainly Scottish workers totheir deaths, the despicable Labouritemillionaire then launched a fund drivefor the bereaved families through hisnewspaper chain. Truly, blood money!

"Accidents will happen," the bossesare saying in chorus. But why do theyhappen? The drive for 'profit .that isintrinsic to capitalism involves system­atic negligence and outright, wantonmurder. Maintenance engineers insist­ed on delaying the fatal flight whenthey discovered an oil leak before itstakeoff, and an eyewitness to thecrash on a nearby fishing vessel sawone of the rotor blades fall off justbefore the Chinook started its dive intothe sea. .

Aircraft design experts describe theChinook as an "engineering nightmare."In February 1983this same chopper hadto make a forced landing when agearbox bearing failed. Only two of thethree improvements recommended in itswake by safety experts-on fire safety,flight deck warning indicator andgearbox design-were ever implement­ed. In October 1984, the synchronisa­tion shaft failed during maintenance.Given the Chinook's overlapping twinrotor blades design, the synchronisationmechanism is critical to keeping theblades from smashing each other to bits.That was the cause of a similarly horrificcrash in Mannheim, West Germany in1982, in which 46 French and Welshamateur parachutists aboard a militaryversion of the Chinook were killed. Itappears that something very similarhappened on November 6.

Women andRevolution

Winter 1986-87No. 32 (32 pages)

JUST OUT!

21 NOVEMBER 1986 5

Hundreds ofThousands Homeless After Duake

Salvador Workers: Give Duartethe Somoza Treatment!

Militant water workers confront Salvador National Police.

The October 10 earthquake in EISalvador struck a heavy blow at thepoor and working people of this landwho have already withstood six years ofcivil war. This was no "act of God"divorced from the class struggle: it is the.slum dwellers who are homeless today,the rich are not sleeping in the streets! Infact, rapacious Salvadoran capitalistsand their bloodthirsty military guarddogs used the opportunity to continue ,pillaging the country arid persecutingworking-class fighters. A revolutionaryworkers party would respond to thisdisaster by mobilizing the Salvadoranmasses against their utterly corrupt andcynical rulers."In Nicaragua, Somoza'slooting of relief supplies fueled outrageultimately leading to the July 1979Sandinista-Ied popular insurrectionthat sent the dictator packing. In EISalvador, where a militant workersmovement is recovering its strengthafter several years underground, theearthquake could be a detonator for

.proletarian revolution sending shockwaves throughout the region.

Within minutes of the first tremor,half the capital lay in ruins. While theSalvadoran government of V.S.-puppetpresident Jose Napoleon Duarte tried todownplay the destruction, relief officialsestimate that as many as 3,000 werekilled, 20,000 injured and 300,000 lefthomeless (SALPRESS, 13 October).More than 500 died in the Ruben Dariooffice building, condemned after the lastquake but never ordered razed by then­mayor Duarte. Some 30,000 homeswere destroyed, not counting the rudemud and adobe structures of thetugurios (slums) which were especiallyhard hit. Compared to last year'sMexico quake, whose force was over ahundred times greater, the number leftwithout a roof over their heads in San

Salvador was double that in MexicoCity. The astounding toll of homelessvictims reveals the precarious existenceeked out by the poor and working classwho live in shacks teetering along rivergullies and clinging to steep ravines. Asmore than 1,000aftershocks and torren­tial rainstorms battered survivors, SanSalvador became a veritable hell onearth.

This disaster comes in the midst of theV.S.-backed war to crush a workers andpeasants. insurgency seeking to throwoff the yoke of more than half a centuryof bloody military rule. Kill-crazy right­wing death squads and uniformed

6

repressive forces have slaughtered morethan 61,000 civilians, and in the lastcouple years murderous governmentalaerial bombardment combined withfrequent army "search and destroy"sweeps have created an internal refugeepopulation of about 500,000 living inand around the capital. With half thepopulation either underemployed orunemployed and the economy mired indepression, the outlook for the Salva­doran masses was catastrophic, evenbefore the October I0 earthquake. Theirexperience since then proves that theclass struggle is not suspended fornatural disasters; the resulting chaosand victimization of the dispossessedonly intensifies it.

The government "relief" operationstrips bare the brutal realities of classoppression in EI Salvador. In Mexicoafter last year's killer quake, the militarywent through the motions of aiding thevictims. In EI Salvador, the army hasdone nothing outside ofthe Ilopango~ir

base (center of the CIA's contra gunrun­ning operation) and protecting govern­ment warehouses. Soldiers watchedwith cold disdain, fingering the trig­gers of their M 16s while Salvadoranand international volunteers feverishlysearched for survivors. Treasury Policechief General Rinaldo Golcher toldNewsday (13 October), "The men arehere to keep order." The dust had hardlysettled before government death squads

.,. resumed their kidnapping and killing.Among the fatalities were seven mem­bers of a refugee relief organization andFrancisco Mendez, an electrical workerof the STECEL union shot by the armywhile working as a brigadista aidingquake victims.

At the airport, the army deliberatelydelayed desperately needed relief sup­plies. These guardians of the bourgeois

no credit

order went over arriving planes, with afine-toothed comb, grotesquely search­ing for arms to the leftist rebels!Sandinista Nicaragua sent a delegationwith blood plasma, medicine andblankets. However, the Salvadorangovernment rejected outright an offer 'by Cuba to supply a fully equipped fieldhospital and team of doctors. It alsoblocked aid shipments destined fordistribution by unions. A V.S. reliefagency denounced the fact "that 15planeloads of supplies were denied

~ landing rights in the days just after thedisaster. Two planes from the LosAngeles-based -Medical. Aid to EI

Salvador were held on the ground fornearly a week. Inside the city, for daysonly the Catholic church and Interna­tional Red Cross distributed limited aid,while hundreds of victims gatheredoutside the hangar where official reliefwas centered, clamoring for food and

San Salvador earthquake: a sceneof devastation.

plastic sheets to protect them from thestorms.

The entire disaster relief operationhas been political from' the start. The"V.S. has tried to control supplies inorder to strengthen its grip on thecapital where a resurgent labor move­ment had begun to assert itself. Perhapsthe most obscene image of this was thephoto of V.S. secretary of state George(Let 'em Eat Bullets) Shultzand butcherDuarte surveying the earthquake dam­age. After his visit, Shultz recom­mended that the majority of future V.S.aid be destined for the military. Duarte,meanwhile, turned coordination ofexternal disaster aid over to the privatesector, partly out of recognition ofwidespread government corruption andpartly to appease the ultraright. Thebusinessmen chosen for the task areleaders of the Salvadoran Foundationfor Development, a group directlylinked with the V.S. exterminationcampaign in the countryside throughthe V.S. Agency for InternationalDevelopment.

Not surprisingly, with this Reagan­style "magic of the marketplace" scantaid reached the victims. Most inter­national donations were siphoned offfor private construction projects orhoarded by the army. Striking person­nel at thePolicllnica Salvadorefia, whoworked around the clock performingsurgery in the hospital parking lot,complained that medicines were si­phoned off by the military hospital. Andwith mass starvation looming, theChristian Democratic. regime an­nounced it would sell 2,000 tons ofwheat donated by the government ofJapan. Meanwhile, with more than30,000 phone lines down, the militarymanager of ANTEL (telecommunica­tions) refused to bring back 20 firedtechnicians, instead contracting a for­eign team. And the ANDAwaterworks,facing urgent repairs to huudreds.of

broken mains, advertised for newworkers rather than rehire 236 firedunion militants. As for reconstruction,some destroyed communities may neverbe rebuilt as wealthy landlords reclaimthe meager parcels on which the poorhad put up their squatters' shacks.

As the initial shock of the earthquakewears off, anger is mounting over thecriminal exploitation of the reliefoperation. On November II hundredsof students burned an effigy of VncleSam and shouted "i Duarte asesino!"when the puppet president tried to setfoot on the University of El'Salvador to"evaluate damage" from the quake."Duarte, you have hurt the universitymore than the earthquake did," camethe outcry, recalling that the campuswas shut down in 1980under the Duartejunta after scores of students weremurdered by a police and army attack.The Salvadoran masses who have livedthrough the bloody civil war and thislatest infernal calamity must burn withclass hatred: there will be no salvationfor them without sweeping away thebrutal rule of Duarte and his Yankeegodfathers, of the insatiable local bour- .geoisie and bloodthirsty military.

For Workers RevolutionThroughout Central America!

During times of crisis nationalists andreformists rally 'round the flag, sub­merging the class struggle in the name of"national unity." Following the Octoberquake the Salvadoran RevolutionaryDemocratic Front (FOR) and theguerrillas' Farabundo Marti NationalLiberation Front (FMLN) declared aunilateral truce. Having earlier canceledthe "dialogue" at Sesori by militarily

.occupying the site, the governmentresponded by increasing military opera­tions in rebel-controlled zones. In theV.S., rad-libs and reformists likeCISPES and the Socialist WorkersParty take up disaster relief as a form ofcharity. What's urgently needed isrevolutionary struggle against the op­pressors! The earthquake was a naturalphenomenon; the fact that hundredsdied and hundreds of thousands are lefthomeless is the product of capitalism.There should have been militant demon­strations against the government de­manding that relief supplies be handedover; the warehouses should have beenseized and slum areas turned into "no­go" areas for the military.

In imperial Russia, at the turn of thecentury widespread famine sparkedphilanthropic relief efforts by theimpotent "Zemstvo" provincial councilspermitted by the autocratic regime. V.I.Lenin could have been describing EISalvador today when he noted inOctober 190I that "the tsarist govern­ment officials hamper and reduce relief,minimise the extent of the distress,impede the opening of food-kitchens,etc." To Narodnik populists and Zemst­vo liberals who accused the socialists of"artificially applying the concept of theclass struggle" to the issue of famine,Lenin responded that "the RussianGovernment excels us all in the judge­ment of the profundity of the classstruggle." The "increasing exploitationof capital" and "predatory policy of thegovernment and of the landlords" hadreduced the peasants to their ruinousstate, he wrote. The future leader ofthe Bolshevik Revolution called for

WORKERS VANGUARD

Mexico, whose PRI rulers fear thecontagion of social revolution couldspread from Central America to theirown earthquake victims and the deeplyexploited Mexican proletariat.

In the U.S. the fake "solidarity"brokers look to Democrats like Walter("Quarantine Nicaragua") Mondaleandto "progressive" union bureaucrats suchas the National Labor Committee forDemocracy and Human Rights in ElSalvador, which voted at the October1985 AFL-CIO convention for a treach­erous negotiated settlement in El Sal­vador and Nicaragua-i-i.e., the FORIFMLN should sit down with thebutchers and the Sandinistas should

exposing the government's criminalfood policies and insisted;

"there neither is nor can be any othermeans of combating unemploymentand crises... than the class struggle ofthe revolutionaryproletariat against theentire capitalist system."

-V.l. Lenin, "Review of HomeAffairs" (October 1901)

The suffering of the hundreds ofthousands of homeless in El Salvadorwill not be alleviated by a truce, butthrough mobilizing the urban poor andthe peasants behind the workers move­ment in revolutionarystruggle. Over thelast two years, the combative Salvado­ran workers have repeatedly taken tothe streets in massive demonstrationsand work stoppages. September saw a"broad movement of labor solidarity"showing "increased class consciousness"(Proceso, 8 October) around strikes byconstruction workers, hospital workersand workers at the CIRCA textile plant,who won their economic demands aftera month on strike. On September 19phone workers.stopped work for threehours, disrupting communications fromDuarte's "peace" charade in Sesori. OnOctober I and 2 more than 15,000teachers and other public employeeswalked out. And on October 4, 50,000people from around the country de­fied a military blockade to marchfor a "political solution to the nation­al conflict and the demands of theworkers."

What "negotiated solution" cantherebe with the arro'gant Salvadoran rulingclass, which prides itself on crushing aworker-peasant upr-ising in the bloody

Union-called national demonstration ofmilitary blockade, October 4.

Matanza of 1932 without calling in theYankees; with the racist exploiters whotoday employ psychopathic killers likeD'Aubuisson so they can dispose ofthe"Indian" toilers like cattle! Communistleader Farabundo Marti understood in1932 that "until the rich class is forcedfrom power by all of us, we will alwaysbe their slaves." Marti's battle cry wasfor"All power to the workers, peasantsand soldiers councils!" The FORIFM LN nationalist-reformists despairabout making a revolution because asnationalists they have no perspective ofinternational class struggle. They lookinstead to "progressive" bourgeois gov­ernments of the Contadora group-like

no credit

50,000 in San Salvador defies

bargain with the contra killers! TheTrotskyists of the SpartacistLeague callinstead for military victory to the leftistinsurgents in El Salvador, and to de­fend, complete and extend the Nicara­guan Revolution. We stand for a classfight against Duarte's death squad"democracy" and its Republican andDemocratic paymasters, for a class­struggle workers party and concreteactions of labor solidarity: hot-cargoarms to El Salvador, for material aid todefend Nicaragua, for labor strikesagainst a U.S. invasion of CentralAmerica.

The San Salvador disaster could be aturning point for the Salvadoran revo­lution, much as the 1972 Managuaearthquake was in Nicaragua. Tenthousand people died there, and aquarter of a million were left homeless;the center of Managua was leveled.International aid poured in. Somozaand his cronies saw in the catastrophe achance to make immense profits.Through ruthless land speculation,'raking in huge loans and stealinginternational relief aid, El Jefe and hispals made millions from the suffering ofthe Nicaraguan people. But the incredi­ble greed and cruelty of these blood­suckers fueled the Sandinista rebellionwhich eventually put an end to Somo­za's tyranny. In El Salvador today, theavarice of the bourgeoisie and theheinous crimes of the military and theirfront man Duarte must spark prole­tarian revolution throughout Cen­tral America to bring these bastardsdown.•

Sons of Salvad"oran Unionist Jailed and Tortured

Free Jose and Jaime Centeno!

CISPESJose and Jaime Centeno in Marlonaprison, May 1986.

From then on, we waged a hardcampaign. They felt obliged, forthe firsttime in El Salvador, to have a picturetaken of them. About three days later,they invited the national press on thecondition that they take pictures with­out asking questions. It seemed strangeto me that my sons appeared in thosephotos wearing jackets. Later, whenthey were in Mariona, they told me thatthey had put the jackets on thembecause they had scars from electricshocks on their arms. The importantthing was the sentiment of solidarity ofall the workers of ElSalvador, of all thepeople. The telecommunications work­ers felt that they were trying to black­mail me, and therefore the whole union,so we continued on strike some 19days.

In November, my sons will have beenheld prisoner for one year, unjustly. AsSalvadorans, we don't find that strange,since for more than 50 years they havebeen violating our human rights. Al­though my sons are in Mariona, andalthough they have broken up a home,they haven't lowered our morale to keepstruggling in favor of the workers, notonly the telecommunications workers,but all the Salvadoran workers. Afterthe capture of my two sons, our workhas become greater, 100 percent more.We hope for the day when all workersunite, and that is one of the aspirationsof many Salvadorans, so that they re­spect us as human beings.•

they were. My eldest son (Jose) is 21 andthe younger (Jaime) 18. When I toldthem that these were my sons, they toldme that they should accompany themtoo. So we left my home in Cojutepeque.They put us face down. They threatenedus. They mistreated us. I was very upset.Never in my life had I been in a jail forany reason. I never" belonged to anypolitical party. I've never been connect­ed with anyone, except in the strugglefor the workers. ,

When we arrived aithe TreasuryPolice, I was taken before ColonelGolcher, He. was very annoyed: he toldme they had made a. big scandal aboutmy seizure. At that point I didn't knowthat my ASTTEL colleagues had de­clared a work stoppage, and also that allthe radio stations in EI Salvador werestrongly criticizing my capture. ColonelGolcher told me that I could go home,but that my sons would remain thereand that they would hand them over tome in the afternoon. Well, from there wewent to the Roma center where the com­pafieros were meeting. With a greatspirit of solidarity they told me that theywere going to continue on strike untilmy sons were released.

Later we went to a congress thatFENASTRAS [National Federation ofSalvadoran Workers] was holding in ahotel in the capital. Then"some Ameri­cans accompanied us to the TreasuryPolice at about five in the afternoon.When we arrived, instead of releasingmy sons, they gave me a notificationsaying that they would be there for 15days. Possibly during that day that mysons were there, the brilliant ideaoccurred to themofframingthemup inthe kidnapping of Colonel NapoleonAvalos. The next day when my wife andI came, my sons didn't recognize Us.They were quite drugged. So I called apress conference and reported that theywere torturing them, they were druggingthem. -

no credif

salvadoran union leader HumbertoCenteno.

only for me. But my sons, on hearing theuproar caused by the entry of many mendressed in civilian clothes-death squadtypes-came out to see what was goingon. The guy in charge asked me who

More than 500 trade unionists and other victims of rightist repression in ElSalvador are imprisoned under the dictatorial decrees of President Jose NapoleonDuarte. Among them are the two sons of the Association of SalvadoranTelecommunications Workers (ASTTEL) secretary Humberto Centeno. The seizureof Centeno and his sons Jose and Jaime by a death squad of plainclothes police inNovember 1985 provoked a national strike by the 7,000 ASTTEL members.Although the elder Centeno was quickly released, Salvadoran phone workers stayedout until his sons were transferred from the torture cells of the Treasury Police toMariona prison. While in the hands of the sadistic cops, a forced "confession" wasextorted from them of supposed involvement in the kidnapping of Colonel OmarNapoleon Avalos, head of the civil aviation agency, CIA agent and Duarte confidant.

This case of brutal anti-labor repression is part of an offensive against ASTTEL,which has been fighting for its life for the last year. In a 51-day strike by militanttelecommunications technicians this spring, 20 strikers were fired, including theunion delegates (see WV No. 409, I August). In the_U.S. the Partisan DefenseCommittee has highlighted their struggle, and locals"of the Communications Workersof America (CWA) in Oakland, Cleveland and New York City have expressedsolidarity with their class brothers and sisters struggling under Reagan-Duarte'sdeath squad "democracy." As part of OUI' defense of the militant Salvadoran phoneworkers, Workers Vanguard spoke with Hurnberto Centeno about the circumstancesof his and his sons' capture. Following are excerpts from his account:

Centeno: We Salvadoran workers havesuffered repression for many years. Asgovernment employees, we are com­pletely unprotected by the laws. Theycan-fire us any momentthey want. Andas in EI Salvador there is so muchunemployment, everyone initially wasafraid of forming their unions. Never­theless, the very hunger as well as theeconomic crisis that all Salvadoranssuffer led us to form associations. Fromthe beginning [in 1984]we weren't goingto be an association that organizedfiestas or held raffles. A series of strikeswere called-at least by ASTTEL aswell as in the Post Office, at the Ministryof Agriculture, at 'Social Security, by thewater utility union. The governmentrealized that we weren't going to be apro-Christian Democratic Party asso­ciation, and neither could the leaders ofASTTEL be bought off by the Ameri­can Embassy with its millions of dollarsthat it throws away in El Salvador.

On November 8, they seized me in my ~

home. When they arrived they asked

21 NOVEMBER 1986 7

Photos (left) ofIsraeli nuclearbomb factorybeneath Negevdesert fromSunday Times(London),5 October1986.

Israeli nucleartechnicianMordechaiVanunu at

demonstrationfor a Palestinian

state last year.

"There are a hundred targets in theArab world, the destruction of whichwill change the face of the area to theextent of not being recognized...."

-s-Ha'aretz, 14 November 1980

And Israel won't suffer from the fall­out?! Yet even in this crazed scenario,what are the other hundred nukes for? Awriter in the Histadrut "union" news-paper last year vituperated: .

"The Soviet regime is the principalsource of international terrorism....Syria is the root of terrorism in theMiddle East, especially against theState of Israel. The western world ingeneral and Israel in particular must cutoff the head of this cancer.jf necessaryby force."

-Davar, I July 1985War with Syria is openly projected

in the Israeli establishment. Andthe nuclear delivery systems are inplace. The "nuclear capable" Jericho-2surface-to-surface missiles, with a rangeof 700 kilometers (about 435 miles),have reportedly been deployed in theNegev and on the occupied GolanHeights overlooking Syria. Israeli Kfirand F-4 Phantom fighter planes carialsoreportedly deliver nuclear bombs. Butwhat if it's no "six-day war"? If worsecomes to worst, it looks like the Zionistgenerals may be preparing to attack theSoviet Union, and let the Americans paythe price. This may be crazy, but crazyis what they are.

Target Russia?

At first glance, the Soviet Union mayappear to be beyond the reach of theIsraelis. The delivery of a large numberof nuclear bombs onto Soviet territorywould require long-range planes ormissiles. One should note, however, thatthe Israelis did manage to send up toeight F-15s on a 1,500-milebombingrun on Tunis in October 1985, apparent­ly by a complicated' midair refuelingprocedure (with the likely connivance ofthe U.S. Sixth Fleet). Curiously, theLavi fighter-bomber now being devel­oped by Israel with about one billiondollars of American money could fill thebill. The plane incorporates Israel's"unique battle experience and the latestelectronic gadgetry to help elude a newgeneration" of Soviet surface-to-airmissiles (Washington Post, 6 August).

Most striking is the combat. radius ofthe plane: 1,150 nautical miles "for air­to-ground missions" (Aviation Week,28 July). This reaches far beyond theArab states. It is, in fact, more. thanenough to reach Soviet Black Sea fleetheadquarters at Sevastopol,' and go asfar as the Ukraine. With refueling, theycould hit Moscow too: Two prototypesof the Lavi now are being tested, andIsrael plans to begin production of 300planes in 1990.Its high cost ($1.7 billion,mostly American money and technolo­gy) indicates that the Reaganites clearlyhave. a big stake in this American plane.And with the Sunday Times expose, wehave to ask: are the Israeli bombs a U.S.reserve arsenal for a "lightning war"(Blitzkrieg) on the Soviet Union?

This also adds a more sinisterdimension to Israel's campaign to "FreeSoviet Jewry." For years, they've soughtto milk Russia of some of its most highlytrained technical personnel (10,000engineers, 3,800 doctors and dentists,7,000 students and 1,200scientists from1971 to 1984). The USSR 'is the lastrepository of Jews whom Israel could

1000!

oI

20 tons.) American complicity clearlygoes way back.

To be sure, the Zionists' local am­bitions sometimes clash with U.S~

strategic interests. In the first days of the1973 October war, when it looked likeIsrael might actually suffer a defeat byArab armies, "Israel's Jericho surface­to-surface missiles were armed withnuclear warheads in a frantic three daysof activity centred around Dimona"(Colonel William V. Kennedy, Intelli­gence Warfare [1983]). The Kremlinreportedly responded by preparing tosend nuclear warheads for Egyptianmissiles, whereupon the U.S., at theheight of Nixon's Watergate crisis, putits strategic forces on red alert.

So what would the Zionists do with200 nuclear bombs? Israel Shahak, thecourageous Israeli civil libertarian, hastranslated the following hair-raisingmusings of Shlomo Aharonson, aprominent supporter of "liberal" ZionistEzer Weizman (the former Israeli airforce chief and then war minister in theLikud government):

"A sufficient amount of atom bombs ...can hit hard all the Arab capitals, andtear down the Aswan Dam. Anotheramount can hit other cities and oilinstallations. Thermonuclear bombs(H-bombs) can destroy territorial aims,including concentrations of Palestini­ans in Lebanon....

Shapiro who, according to a 1977expose in Rolling Stone magazine, wassupplying Israel with uranium; Presi­dent Johnson, however, ordered anofficial cover-up.

Last year reports surfaced that Israelhad purchased 800 nuclear bombtriggers from an American firm; U.S.officials had not asked to inspect thesites where these krytrons were in usesince "such a request could be con­strued by the Israelis as an affront totheir national sovereignty" (New YorkTimes, 16 May 1985). And this pastweek it was revealed that Department ofEnergy records document a 1963 ship­ment to Israel of four metric tons ofheavy water-a key ingredient in run­

.ning the nuclear reactor at Dimona.(NATO ally Norway supplied another

M~ One inch equalsapproximately 750 mites

250 500I I

SAN FRANCISCO

WV Map

Israelis target Russia: new Lavi fighter-bomber could nuke Soviet Black Seafleet headquarters at Sevastopol. With refueling, they could reach Moscow.

Vanunu affair is a ruse by Israeliintelligence." Israeli military plannersopenly talk about the "next war," theone against Syria. The Economist (15November) speculates that Vanunu'sstory "could have been intended to serveas a deterrent to any attack on Israel theSyrians may have been thinking about."But an Israeli disinformation scheme isunlikely in the extreme because theinformation is terribly damaging toIsrael. This sounds like the Mossadtrying to cover an egregious securitybreach.

The American ConnectionOne thing is certain: the Israelis didn't

develop their nuclear weapons bythemselves-they had help from keyimperialist allies. The French provided

the initial nuclear infrastructure, andthen the U.S. came in, with secret help"from the West Germans. In 1979,according to CBS News, Israel tested anuclear bomb in the' South Atlantic"with help and cooperation of the SouthAfrican government" (quoted in IsraelShahak, Israel's Global Role[1982]). Inthe mid-'60s the U.S. Atomic EnergyCommission discovered several hun­dred pounds of enriched uraniummissing from the inventory of a Pennsyl­vania company headed by one Zalman

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Sex Snoops, Racists and Book-Burners Run Rampan~

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(continued from page 1)

hid the elevators to the secret under­ground factory from the prying eyes ofinternational inspectors. Vanunu gavethe Sunday Times more than 60 photo- ,graphs of the ultra-secret bunker, oneshowing a component oflithium deuter­ide (for a thermonuclear bomb with theforce of "hundreds" of kilotons). Hisaccount was double- and triple-checkedby nuclear scientists in Britain and theU.S.

The article noted that one wouldexpect "bigger gaps" in the knowledgeof "a mere technician," but this might beexplained by the fact that he worked atDimona for nearly a decade. How comehe was left alone to photograph theentire secret complex (there are nopeople in his photos)? The SundayTimes explanation was that British'control room technicians are often freeto "roam around nuclear plants alone to"follow up alarms." Reputable scientistssaid it would have been possible tosecretly upgrade the original Dimonareactor from 26 megawatts capacity tothe 150megawatts needed to produce somuch plutonium. But other questionsrernain-e.g., why did the usuallyefficient Shin Beth (the Israeli FBI) letVanunu out of the country shortly afterhis dismissal, and how did he smuggleout his film?

The story has its bizarre aspects. Weare told that while working at Dimona,Vanunu "became a member of theIsraeli Communist Party and was ac­tive in pro-Palestinian demonstrations"(New York Times, 10 November). Alsohe was reportedly "modeling naked fordrawing classes at Beersheba Universi­ty," in a small desert town where most ofthe Arabs are pro-Zionist Bedouins. Agirlfriend says he "volunteered to be laidoff." He then went to Australia, thestory goes, where he met a Colombianjournalist named Oscar Guerrero, oddlyworking as a handyman at an Anglicanchurch (where Vanunu was convertingto Christianity), who persuaded him totell his story to the press. Guerrerowanted money, but Vanunu told News­week, "I'm doing it for peace."

Not surprisingly, the New YorkTimes (29 October) reports "there is aschool of thought among militaryanalysts in Israel that suggests the entire

ZionistMadmen...

8 WORKERS VANGUARD

Was EI AI- Bomb aMossad Plot? strike against Libya, Chirac replied,"Totally, completely counterproduc­tive.... the Americans with their farcicalair raid merely retarded the destabiliza­tion of Qaddafi's regime." "YQU aresaying the U.S. does not have the will toact," commented de Borchgrave. "Thatis self-evident," Chirac responded.

Replying to a barb from de Borch­grave, Chirac, said that France sup­ported Washington in Central Ameri­ca, because "this region was of vitalinterest to the U.S.," but complained theAmericans were not reciprocating inAfrica, where they tried to muscle in onFrench operations in Chad. Appealingfor "prudence" in the Near East in orderto "prevent the stampede of fundamen­talism throughout the region," he said,"the West must ... not allow itself to bedeflected by a few bombs going off in thestreets of their capitals":

"But Britain continues to sell arms toIran, and we now hear the U.S. doestoo, and they don't even bother toconceal what they are doing. So muchfor Western solidarity .... Britain wantsus all to sever relations with Syriabecause of some obscure bomb plot thatmisfired. Do they really think thatpeople will then say, 'Bravo, they've gotballs'?"

In the subsequent brouhaha, Britishright-wing Labourite Denis Healeyasked why this should come out in aMoonie newspaper. Arnaud de Borch­grave, you see, is a long-timejournalisticoperative "witting" in the ways of U.S.intelligence agencies. Chirac clearlyintended the published article based onan off-the-record interview to reflect hisgeneral views, while' his more bluntlyput goodies would be passed on directlyto the White House. But the Washing­ton .. Times editor had his own ax togrind, in particular getting back at theFrench for their refusal to allow Britain­based U.S. F-Ills to take the directroute for their Libya strike.

The Western allies are still united on"the basics," namely the drive to "rollback Communism" and ultimately re­conquer the Soviet-bloc bureaucratical­ly degenerated and deformed workersstates for capitalism. But here we havethe interimperialist contradictions ex­posed to the light of day-with theUnited States desperately struggling torecover hegemony after its resoundingdefeat at the hands of the Vietnamesepeasants and workers a decade ago,while France, still smarting over DienBien Phuand the battle of Algiers, istrying to rebuild a sphere of influence inthe Levant. As for the supposed Syrianplot, we find, buried in the middle of aLondon Times (I I November) article onChirac's interview, the laconic remark:"The father of Nazar Hindawi jailed inBritain for trying to blow up an EI AIairliner, was sentenced to death in hisabsence by Jordan for spying forIsrael. ...".

minister's office, was embarrassed. Thisis how the imperialists talk entre nous.On the El Al plot, Chirac had told thepaper's editor in chief Arnaud deBorchgrave:

"But let's take the Syrian affair. I spoketo both [West German ChancellorHelmut] Kohl and [Foreign Minister]Hans-Dietrich Genscher about it. Idon't go as far as they do, but theirthesis is that the [Nizar] Hindawi plotwas a provocation designed to embar­rass Syria and destabilize the Assadregime. Who was behind it? Probablypeople connected with the IsraeliMossad in conjunction with certainSyrian elements close to Assad whoseek his overthrow. Things of thisnature can be infinitely complex."

When de Borchgrave claimed thatBritish intelligence (who "are prettygood with electronic surveillance")knew of a meeting between Hindawi andthe Syrian ambassador, Chirac replied:"Nothing is easier than to fake that kindof evidence without government leadersknowing about the real plot." He addedthat "I am always suspicious ofthis sortof affair, especially when it fits into acertain policy. First it was Libya, andnow it's Syria...."

.This was already enough to setWashingtonon its ear, but the trenchantcritique of Reagan's Near East policiesby the right-wing French prime ministerwas too much even to report. When de

. Borchgrave claimed that the U.S. andeven French intelligencehad demon­strated the existence of an "internation­al terror network ... linked . to Easternsecret services," Chirac dismissed the"Soviet connection" out of hand: "Yourservices and our own are worthless.Moreover, they are all penetrated....They've always been penetrated." Askedhis opinion about the April 14 U.S. air

ammaPalestinian Nezar Hindawi, Irish girlfriend AnnMurphy and EI AI plane. Imperialists can't agree onwhat the "real story" is.

perhaps by kidnapping Britons inBeirut" (Jerusalem Post [internationaledition], 8 November). But the letter isintercepted by Italian police, and thecousin is in custody on charges ofinvolvement in last year's Achille Laurocruise liner hijacking. If you believethis ...

Nezar Hindawi was convicted by aLondon court on October 24 andsentenced to 45 years in prison. There­upon Margaret Thatcher's governmentannounced it was breaking off relationswith Syria, and called on Britain's alliesto back her up-based on the supposed:ly conclusive evidence of Syrian involve­ment (which was not presented at thetrial). Washington withdrew its ambas­sador from Damascus and announcedempty "sanctions," such as a ban onticket sales for Syrian airlines, whichdon't fly to the U.S. anyway. After somearm-twisting, the Common Marketcountries fell into line as well. Greecedissented, however, comparing the anti­Syrian campaign to the anti-Sovietpropaganda barrage over the shootingdown of the South Korean airlinerwhich overflew key Soviet militaryinstallations in September 1983. TheGreek stand against sanctions will beproved right, said the deputy foreignminister, just as the KAL 007 "wasproved to have been conducting espio­nage" (New York Times, 16November).

In the midst of all this came theChirac revelations. Paris first tried todeny the report, disputing the "interpre­tation" given to the French primeminister's remarks. But after the Wash­ington Times (10 November) publishedthe full transcript of the pithy interview,Chirac conceded its accuracy. No

. wonder Hotel Matignon, the prime

While the "Teherangate" affair wasblowing White House credibility tokingdom come, another bombshellexploded when French prime ministerJacques Chirac was quoted, in aninterview reported in Sun MyungMoon's Washington Times, saying heunderstood from top German officialsthat the EIAI bomb plot in London lastApril may have been a Mossad job,orchestrated by the Israeli spy agencyfrom start to finish. For the last severalyears, Reagan's shtick in the imperial­ists' anti-Soviet "state-supported terror­ism" campaign has been Libya-bashing,leading to the Americans' March airraid on Libyan SAM sites and Reagan'sTripoli murder raid against Qaddafi inApril. Now Britain and Israel arepushing the "Syrian connection," withclearance from Washington. Syria iswidely understood to be the targetof the Israeli war buildup. But theChirac revelations cut the ground fromunder this latest criminal provocationas well.

From the beginning, the case of NezarHindawi and the alleged plan to blow upan EI Al jet 'sounded uncannily like aplot straight out of The Little DrummerGirl, John Le Carre's pro-Zionistespionage novel. A high-living Pales­tinian terrorist in London induces anaive, lonely Irish chambermaid, justtwo months off the boat from Dublin, tobe his unwitting pawn. Supposedly,Hindawi hands his girlfriend, AnnMurphy, whom he's gotten pregnantand promises to marry (in Israell), abrown suitcase (which during the trialchanges its color to blue) containing aplastique bomb, and a detonator(disguised as a pocket calculator) timedto explode somewhere over the SwissAlps en route to Israel. After she is leftholding the bag, as it were, Hindawiruns to the Syrian embassy, meets withthe ambassador, no less, and is spiritedaway to a safe house.

Fearing that the Syrians are going todo him in, he bolts and holes up in aLondon hotel where he is convenientlyarrested by Scotland Yard, who it turnsout had been trailing him for almosttwo months. Meanwhile, his brother,Ahmed Hazi, is implicated by WestBerlin police in the March bombing ofan obscure German-Arab friendshipassociation. (For a while they tried tolink Hazi to the April 5 bombing of LaBelle disco, the West Berlin clubfrequented by black AmericanGIs andTurkish workers, which was the pretextfor Reagan's terror-bombing of Libya.)Hindawi writes to a cousin in Italy,telling him to "persuade the Syrians toarrange for Britain to release him,

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the Israelis have, but it's an open secretthat the U.S. has over 25,000 ready to hitthe Soviet bloc. And while Reaganhallucinates about "Star Wars," it'sofficial U.S. policy to "decapitate" the

the Reagan administration.The Israelis have taken on the dirty

work of providing arms and training forReagan's anti-Soviet terrorist scumaround the world, from the Somozaist"contras" in Nicaragua to the apartheidracists of South Africa. And Israel hasbecome well integrated into Reagan'snuclear first-strike plans: the twocountries recently conducted jointmilitary maneuvers and Israel hasagreed' to allow "pre-positioning" ofU.S. military supplies on its soil, as wellas cooperating in Reagan's "Star Wars"space weapons scheme. As one Israeliobserver perceptively noted:

"The Americans pay us because theywant to keep a plane-carrier with 4million inhabitants in [a] place withextraordinary strategic value, near tothe USSR, near to East Europe, near tothe oil fields."

-Po Sever in AI Hamishmar,29 April

The Zionists are dangerous madmenwho are fully capable of pushing thebutton. But their big brothers inWashington are also war crazy. Wedon't know how many nuclear weapons

conceivably drag to the "promisedland," especially since New York Jewslong ago discovered what a hellhole/deathtrap Israel is and limit theirsupport to dollars for Israel Bonds.(Soviet Jews who get conned intoleaving Russia for Israel quickly decideto move on to New York, andsome ofthe latter are now moving back to theSoviet Union, where they can at least geta job and free medical care.) Is Israelnow trying to get all the Jews out beforean anti-Soviet holocaust is unleashed?

The legacy of the Bolshevik Revo­hition of 1917, even following thebureaucratic. Stalinist degeneration, isthe prime target of the Western imperi­alists. The Zionists have sought to makethemselves the instrument of one impe­rialism after another, from the BritishBalfour Declaration to Shamir's offer toHitler to build a fascistic "New Order"in Palestine to the Israeli rulers' chosenrole as point men for the anti-Soviet wardrive. In fact it was the Israelis who firstinvented the slander about the Soviet ­Union as the "source" of all "terrorism,"a theme which became the hallmark of

21 NOVEMBER 1986 9

White HouselNY Post

Jordan/Time

continued hostility between Iran andthe United States-natural strategicallies who are now deeply at odds."

And the U.S.' privileged partner in theNear East, Zionist Israel, has main­tained close ties with Iran both underthe CIA-installed shah and the Shi'itefundamentalist ayatollahs. As far asthey're concerned, although Islamic,Persian Iran is an enemy of the Arabs,and therefore a natural friend of Israel.They love the bloody Iran-Iraq war(more than a million dead so far) whichis doing more to tie down their enemiesthan the shah ever did.

In their bizarre fashion, the Reagan­ites were trying to mend anti-Sovietfences in the region. It's not so easygiven the hodgepodge of competingnationalisms. By botching it so ineptly,they've led even conservative punditsand politicos to wonder if it's bed­time for Bonzo. But the White Housespinmeisters aren't giving in: aftergetting shellacked at the polls, they putthe president up there again to say the"Reagan revolution" would continue­just no more Mr. Nice Guy. For theworking class, the administration'stemporary diplomatic setback won'tamount to much, and the Democrats inpower would be more of the same:remember Billy Carter and Qaddafi?The Iran follies are low comedy, butwhen the Great Communicator "joked"

. about the bombing of Russia beginningin five minutes, he wasn't kidding. It'sonly by the working class organizingand taking state power away from thenuclear-armed madmen in Washingtonthat we'll get to have the last laugh.•

WHITE HOUSE SCHOOLOF FALSIFICATION:

Col. Oliver North(top photo,

second from right)with Reagan and

contra leadersat White House

(Washington Post,14 August 1985).

Photo (bottom) givento New York Post

by White Housedisappears North.

Stupido" (New York Times, 15Novem­ber). So much for "Operation Staunch."

"Teherangate" has provided theDemocrats with an excellent opportuni­ty to out-Reagan Reagan. Maybe theyfigure they could ride back into office in'88 by mimicking Reagan's "stand tall"rhetoric against Carter. (The media arewilling to do their part, rerunning clipsof Reagan vowing never to negotiatewith "terrorists.") Outgoing DemocraticHouse Speaker Tip O'Neill on CNNNews (14 November) pointed to thesinister pattern of the Reagan adminis­tration: "I just see so many incidences inthe past. When [KAL Flight] 007 wentdown that's the day we met and decidedto send our Marines to Beirut. When the241 Marines were killed, three days laterget it off the front page and go intoGrenada. At Iceland, it's a disaster andtwo hours later, public relations: 'whyit's been a success'."

No matter what the immediateobjectives of Reagan's NSC operationsin Iran, behind the arms shipments andfarcical "secret diplomacy" is the urgentdesire to secure strategic anti-Sovietinterests in the region. The Soviet V nionborders Iran to the north, Afghanistanto the east. As the Navy Times (17November) noted:

"Under current doctrine.vthe UnitedStates is committed tod'efend thePersian Gulf-meaning Iran-with anymeans against any threat from outsidethe area, which means the SovietUnion.... If Iran were prepared toabandon its reflexive hostility to theUnited States, however, the U.S.strategic task would be greatly simpli­fied.... The Soviet Union would knowthat it would not be able to count on

Gaumy/Magnum

Speaker of Iranian parliament Raf­sanjani (left), and carnage of Iran­Iraq war.

there's this McFarlane megalomaniacacting like he's Henry the K, complain­ing when the Iranians wouldn't meetwith them: "You are nuts. We havecome to solve your problems, but this ishow you treat us. If I went to Russia tobuy furs, Gorbachev would come to seeme three times a day." (Oh, yeah? Trythat kind of stunt in Moscow and seewhat happens.)

Even the nutty ayatollahs running1ran know they're dealing with some far­out people of the lunar persuasion inWashington. So they quickly chuck outMcF & Co. and leak the story beforeeven stranger things start happening totheir country-bombings, invasions,terror strikes in the name of "fightingterrorism." Sure, the V.S.' 1980 embas­sy hostage "rescue" mission got stuck inthe desert with sand up their turbines;the Delta Force was so panicked theyleft their dead on the ground. But animperialist bully, defeated in Vietnamand made a laughing stock over Iran, isdangerous indeed. They struck merci­lessly at tiny Grenada and bombedQaddafi's Libya while gearing up to do amurderous job on Sandinista Nicara­gua. And where was the ubiquitous Col.Oliver C. ("Now You See Him, NowYou Don't") North of overt covert con­tra war fame? In 1980 he was just overthe border in Turkey; this time he ranthe show from Cyprus.

Back in Washington, White House

spokesman Larry Speakes (who learnedsomething about credibility gaps whileserving as press aide to Nixon's Water­gate attorney James St. Clair) wastrying to get the press and Congress toback off. But the story is out. Mean­while, the Danish seamen's union hasprovided information about the flow of.U.S. arms to Iran, out of understand­able concern over their members' safetyin the midst of the. war with Iraq.Columnist Russell Baker said he'dplanned to start his piece with theremark, "In President Carter's time theAyatollah Khomeini called the V nitedStates 'The Great Satan.' After dealingwith President Reagan he will call it 'El

Jan Norden,editorWorkers Vanguard

Tom Janota,WV correspondent,with slide show on Nicaragua

Saturday, November 22, 4:00 p.m.Borough of Manhattan Community College, Room N402, 199 Chambers St.

(Take any train to Chambers. walk west) For more information: (212) 267-1025

Speakers:

Rafsanjani the airport guards werehungry and ate it.

This One Takes the CakeWho will ever know the fierce debates

within the National Security Councilover what kind of cake would smoothrelations with the ayatollahs? Have theyalready sold the royalties to Hollywood?We do know the Iranians were oddlyunamused. Consider their plight: somevery dubious types show up with phonyIDs, planeloads of guns, bags of weirdgoodies, probably making jokes aboutthe good old days of the shah. You run acheck, and it turns out they're heavy­duty White House operatives. Plus

. Abbas/GammaDelta Force debacle, Iran 1980: Bungled U.S. "rescue mission" abandonedits dead in the desert.

NEW YORK CITY

Spartacist~Forum

u.s. Workers:Smash the War on Nicaragua!

GonzoDiplomacy...(continued from page 1)

the Reykjavik summit, even put a goodface on loss of the Senate to theDemocrats, he bragged. But not fourtimes in a row. Reagan finally went onTV to tell the story of the Iranian guns­for-hostages deals, to no avail: 14 per­cent ·of the American people believedhim. MQSt thought the president wassuffering from foot-in-mouth disease.

It must have been quite a scene inTeheran last spring. Disguised as a flightcrew, the party carried a cake in theshape of a key, to symbolize thereopening of Iran-V.S. relations. Therewas also a pair of Colt pistols, and aBible reportedly with an inscription byRonald Reagan himself about theaffinity of different religions. Plus theybrought along a couple planes withmilitary equipment as sweeteners. TheBible was probably not a big hit with theayatollah; they might as well have'brought a candied ham or a bottle ofscotch. Khomeini reportedly told Irani­an "parliament" leader HojatolislamRafsanjani not to receive McFarlane'smessage, and the crew were kept lockedup in their hotel room for five days(while their phone calls to Reagan weretaped). As for the cake, according to

10 WORKERS VANGUARD

AFL-CIB. To~s Push Anti-Ja~an Crusade

Workers: Don't BuyProtectionist Poison!

When they are not giving back theirmembers' wages and benefits, thiscountry's union tops are busy whip­ping up chauvinist hostility against theJapanese, whom they scapegoat forthe wretched state of American capi­talism. Taking time off from setting upsweetheart deals with contractors, theAFL-CIO building trades honchospicketed the Japanese embassy inWashington a few days ago, demand­ing the hiring ofmore unionized laborfor a Toyota plant being built inKentucky. They're considering anoth­er such demonstration in Lexington,Kentucky on Pearl Harbor Day,December 7. We wouldn't be surprisedif they picked the anniversary of theA-bombing of Hiroshima next.

Anti-Japanese protectionism and

other measures are the only "answer"of the sellout labor bureaucracy togiveback contracts, union-busting,speedup, mass layoffs, plant closingsand the rampant deindustrialization ofAmerica. Economic warfare againstJapan is the "friend of labor" Demo­cratic Party politicos' "answer" toReaganomics. Walter (Big Loser)Mondale carried on at an electricalworkers' convention a couple of yearsago:

"We have got to get tough-and Imean reallytough/-with nations thatuse our markets but deny us theirmarkets! And I'll tell you today that ifyou try to sell an American car inJapan, you better have the UnitedStates Army with you when they landon the docks!"

No wonder a leading Japanese con-

Toyoto-bashingpublicity stunt

by Indiana steelunion, 1982.

servative politician, who visited theU.S. a few years back, said the climateof opinion here reminded him of theyears just before World War II.

Japan was driven into that war byprotectionist barriers raised against itsexports by the Western powers dur­ing the Great Depression ofthe 1930s.The attack on Pearl Harbor was adirect response to the American, Brit­ish and Dutch embargo of oil ship­ments to Japan without which' itseconomy could not survive. U.S. im­perialism' ,thus provoked Japan intowar and then ended it with one of

the most cold-blooded atrocities inmodern times: dropping the first nu­clear weapons on the defenseless civil­ian populations of Hiroshima andNagasaki.

Today once again, capitalist decayand the pro-imperialist labor bureauc-

. racies are driving American andJapanese workers against one another.The answer to Pearl Harbor andHiroshima is for the American andJapanese workers to unite and wageclass war against their own exploiterson Wall Street and in Tokyo, from theFortune 500 to the zaibatsu.

SPARTACIST LEAGUElU.S. LOCAL DIRECTORYNational Office: Box 1377 GPO, New York, NY 10116 • (212) 732-7860

DetroitBox 32717Detroit, MI 48232

Los AngelesBox 29574, Los Feliz Sta.Los Angeles, CA 90029(213) 384-9716

Madisonc/o SYL, Box 2074Madison, WI 53701(608) 257-8625

New YorkBox 444, Canal S1. Sta.New York, NY 10013(212) 267-1025

NorfolkBox 1972, Main PONorfolk, VA 23501

OaklandBox 32552Oakland, CA 94604(415) 839-0851

San FranciscoBox 5712San Francisco, CA 94101(415) 863-6963

Washington, D.C.Box 75073Washington, D.C. 20013(202) 636-3537

TorontoBox 7198, Station AToronto, Ontario M5W 1X8(416) 593-4138

dozens of plants and throwing hundredsof thousands of workers on the scrap­heap, in order to make a bigger buckelsewhere. U.S. Steel has become USX,while GM/Hughes has become one ofthe prime Star Wars defense contrac­tors. The only answer is for the workersto "divest" the bosses in a socialistrevolution that will expropriate themeans of production and achieve aninternational planned economy.

South African unionists have shownthe way forward for real internationalsolidarity: in February 3M workersthere struck in solidarity with locked­out 3M workers in Freehold, NewJersey. A class-struggle leadership in theUAW would shut down the entire GMchain with militant strike action andplant occupations in solidarity with thecourageous South African auto workersand in defense of the jobs of Americanworkers. Such a leadership would op­pose import quotas designed to rob Jap­anese and Korean workers of their jobs,and would appeal to these workers fortheir support by not boosting exportsduring a strike. But such a perspectiverequires a militant, internationalistleadership, not the labor lieutenants ofcapital who tie the workers to thebosses, in the U.S. as well as Japan andKorea. An international Trotskyistparty must be forged, with deep rootsin the trade unions, that will unifythe struggles of workers around theworld and fight for final victory overthe parasitic system of capitalistexploitation.•

TROTSKYIST LEAGUEOF CANADA

AtlantaBox 4012Atlanta, GA 30302

BostonBox 840, Central Sta.Cambridge, MA 02139(617) 492-3928

ChicagoBox 6441, Main POChicago, IL 60680(312) 663-0715

ClevelandBox 91037Cleveland,OH 44101(216) 621-5138

come home to roost: the 3 percent islong gone, American auto workershave taken massive cuts, while UAWleaders hypocritically squawk that theyare undercut by "company unions"abroad.

In explaining the'militant.stand oftheSouth African auto workers strikingGM, NAAWU leader Fred Sauls noted:"We can't just stand back and let themleave the country with all the gold anddiamonds and profits they've madehere" (Wall Street Journal, 7 Novem­ber). This statement applies equally tothe United States. The big corporationshave looted basic industries, closing.

For Militant InternationalSolidarity!

UAW heacfOwen Bieber

(right) sells outauto workers in1984 pact withGM chairmanRoger Smith.

black Detroit could have halted theunion-busting drive that burgeoned twoyears later when Reagan busted thePATCO air traffic controllers.

The UAW's sole "success" story sincethen has been the joint GM-Toyota NewUnited Motor Manufacturing, Inc.'(NUMMI) plant in Fremont, Califor­nia. With import quotas in force, Japa­nese and now Korean auto makershave increasingly chosen to open upplants here, often with no union or withvirtually company unions, like theUAW at NUMMI. The old GM planthere was reopened with half the work­force hired without regard to unionseniority, the grievance system essential-

"ly destroyed, and job classificationsreduced to four. Nor is NUMMI heavilyautomated-it's old-fashioned speedup,turning up the screws to increase the rateof exploitation. The American bossesknow a good thing when they see it, andthe new GM Saturn plant in Tennesseewill model its "labor relations" onNUMMI. The rotten Saturn deal wasaccepted by the UAW tops beforeworkers were even hired!

. Recently Victor Reuther, brother oflong-time UAW chief Walter, surfacedas a spokesman for opponents to theSaturn deal. But Victor Reuther and thehouse "dissidents" in the UAW acceptthe same pro-capitalist and anti-foreign­worker program as Bieber & Co. Inexchange for an annual 3 percent wageincrease, the Reuther bureaucracy(which trained the Biebers and Ephlins)enforced company discipline on theshop floor and shackled the union to thestate. The UAW was one of the firstunions to register under the anti-laborTaft-Hartley law. Victor Reuther was aself-confessed bag man for the CIA,whose work centered on purging left­wingers in unions abroad, therebyhelping pro-boss union misleaders gainascendancy. Now the chickens have

the impending plant closings-that bothcompany and union officials knew werecoming.

The UAW philosophy these days is"what's good for GM, auto workersbetter eat." But there can be nopartnership between labor and capital.Kissing the company's ass at home andpromoting trade war abroad has meantturning over billions in concessions tothe bosses. The "voluntary" quotasimposed on foreign car makers allowedthe companies to jack up prices andmake profits hand over fist. The jobs ofauto workers have not been saved: since1978 some 215,000 or 30 percent of thejobs in the industry have gone down thetubes. The American capitalists will notrebuild industry: last December GMused its massive profits to buyoutHughes Aircraft instead.

The concessions racket was usheredin in a big way in 1979, when Chryslerwent bankrupt. Then Doug Fraser and

Lee Iacocca, in concert with Democraticpresident Carter, bailed out Chrysler atthe expense of half the company'sworkforce. UAW head Doug Fraser gothis payoff by becoming a member ofChrysler's board so that he could voteon demanding more billions in give­backs from the union! (Striking SouthAfrican workers, who are asking for amember on the company board, shouldlearn from the U.S. experience.) At thattime the Spartacist League called for sit- ~

down strikes to seizeChrysler's assets. Awave of plant occupations centered in

WV Photo

Spartaclst banner·at UAW protest atGM headquarters, Detroit 1979.

GMShutdown...(continued from page 12)

21 NOVEMBER 1986 11

WfJRNER"'''fJIJIIR'South Africa: Mass Firing of Auto Strikers

AP APPontiac workers leave plant after GM closings announced (left). Striking South African workers at GM Port Elizabeth plant confront company cop (right).

eneral Motors Shutdownto Ax 120,000 Jobs in U.S.

To: National Automobile and AlliedWorkers Union (NAAWU)

102 Lotus Building, Cottrell St.Port Elizabeth, S.A. 6001

Motor Assembly ComponentsWorkers Union

P.O. Box 11136Port Elizabeth, S.A. 6000

Victory to your resolute strikedefending jobs and unions againstGM and in defiance of police state.At same time GM chops 30,000jobs in U.S. International solidari­ty from American workers impera­tive. Smash apartheid. Wealth ofSouth Africa belongs to its toilers.

Partisan Defense Committee

15 November 1986

protectionist legislation limiting foreigncar imports. The UAW misleaders ex­pressed gratitude at having been given"early notice" of the layoffs. "Both Mr.Ephlin and company officials said theplant closings had been expected forseveral years...."

In other words, UAW officials fromInternational president Owen Bieber ondown lied when they sold the rottencontract with GM two-years ago,claiming that it guaranteed job security.One labor economist noted: "Often, youfind that clauses written into contractsprotecting job security seem to go by thewayside when it comes to companysurvival or corporate profits, and thatseems to be the case here" (New YorkTimes, 7 November). The "job protec­tion" negotiated by the UAW wascertainly designed to ensure that therewould be no incursion on company prof­its. It omitted "only" one eventuality:

continued on page 11

and Hamilton, Ohio along with thou­sands more at St. Louis, WillowSprings, Illinois and Pontiac, Michigan.And GM chairman Roger Smith said tolook for more "consolidations" (plantclosings). Already, 1,500 additionalBuick workers in Flint have been laidoff. Flint UAW officials lamented thatwhile their people will 'be losing every­thing, ,"Roger Smith has dollar signsin his eyes" (Detroit Free Press, 7November).

If ever a situation cried out formilitant, joint labor action from PortElizabeth to Detroit to shut down abloodsucking capitalist giant and seizethe plants, this is it. The UAW tops in"Sacrifice House" predictably actedotherwise: union vice president for GMDonald Ephlin would only "regret thisdecision," and avoided any criticism ofGM. Instead the union called on theDemocratic-controlled Congress to bailout the bosses by passing chauvinist

GM's brutal treatment of its SouthAfrican unions exposes the liberal lie .that divestment schemes and pressurefrom American corporations willliber­ate the black masses from apartheidslavery. From South Africa to America,GM attacks unions and lays off workersin pursuit of one and only one goal:higher profits. The U.S. plant closingswill massively devastate an alreadyindustrially devastated area. The closingof the Fleetwood/Clark assembly andConner stamping plants will leave onlytwo auto plants within the city limits ofblack Detroit. Flint, Michigan will beeven harder hit when approximately8,000 workers pick up their pink slips asGM closes two facilities including' thebody plant that was the site of thefamous six-week sit-down strike of 1937that established the United Auto Work­ers (UAW).

Also slated for the unemploymentlines are over 6,000 workers in Norwood

Turnley/Detroit Free Pr;~s

.tnternational labor solidarity: militant black workers at Johannesburg 3Mdemonstrate in support of New Jersey 3M workers fighting plant closure.

NOVEMBER 17-General MotorsCorporation called in South Africa'sapartheid police on November 7 tobreak up plant occupations in PortElizabeth by militant auto workersthere. The workers were striking inresponse to GM's announcement that itwas "divesting" its local operation,leaving workers with no guarantee ofunion protection or any jobs at all.Simultaneously. the largest Americanmanufacturer announced a sweepingprogram for domestic disinvestment: itwill shut nine automotive assembly andstamping plants outright and partiallyclose two more, terminating 29,000workers in Michigan, Ohio, Missouriand Illinois. The massive cutbacks inGM's American operations, the mostsweeping in its 78-year history, willresult in an anticipated 120,000 layoffs,including workers in related industries.

In South Africa members of theNational Automotive and Allied Work­ers Union (NAAWU) and the MotorAssembly and Component Workersoccupied' GM's Kempston Road andAloes plants when the company an­nounced it was selling out to a consor­tium consisting of its former whitemanagers. In an exceptional display ofclass solidarity cutting across raciallines, white workers initially downedtools along with black workers ( Week­Iy Mail, 31 October-6 November).NAAWU demanded severance pay andpension payments, seekingcompensa­tion for lost job security and seniorityrights. The bosses' answer was to callout riot cops and troops to evict theworkers. Some 567 militants were fired;in the face of continued strike action,GM has announced that it will hirescabs and resume production "with orwithout the unions." And on November17, cops viciously attacked the PortElizabeth strikers with snarling dogsand whips.

12 21 NOVEMBER 1986